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Barrayar ⚔ Cetaganda ⚔ The Invasion

Have you read the FAQ?

The Village ⚔ The Barrayaran Camp ⚔ The Cetagandan Base ⚔ The Fight

You've been on Barrayar for a while now, and you're finally starting to adjust. Or maybe you're not. Maybe this is all still too much for you – the attacks, the constant raids, living in the middle of a war zone by no choice of your own. But if you want to live long enough to make it back home one day, you might as well do what you can to help the war effort. Besides, where else are you going to go?

The fierce Barrayaran winter rages even to the southern end of the continent, and it's been none too kind to Vorkosigan's District. Temperatures at sea level are well below freezing, and up in the mountains, it's even colder. Several inches of snow already blanket most of the mountains all the way down to the Cetagandan base, and the storm that's just started up is only bringing more down. Visibility is low in the flurries, wind swirling snow everywhere, and God help you if you get lost on your own out in the storm. Nights are cold, these days.

A recent attack on the Cetagandan base has left half their facilities damaged and in disarray. Raid parties snuck in by night, planting bombs in previously scouted locations for maximum effect. Damage to the base's water treatment plant and organic grow labs have considerably impacted the Cetagandans' food and water supply, and in the chaos caused by the explosions, the Barrayaran guerrillas raided their medbay and made off with a considerable bounty of medical supplies. One man's bane is another man's boon, and while the Cetagandans have reserve supplies to sustain them for now, some of the damage is extensive and the repairs will take time. But in the meantime, the Barrayarans have scored a precious victory as well as equally precious resources.

the village
The Riverfall villagers are used to the harsh winters of the Dendarii mountains, and though they don't have much themselves, they are happy to offer what they can in terms of cold-weather clothing and extra blankets to those allied with the guerrillas. Despite the cold, the hill children are going wild in the snow, and they may try to lure you into their play by sneakily pelting you with snowballs.

Cetagandan allies, however, may not be met so warmly, and at the first sight of ghem soldiers, any children out playing in the snow will be immediately ushered into their homes. Unaccompanied outsiders from the Cetagandan base might have an easier time talking to the hillfolk, but any attempt at digging information about the guerrillas out of them will get you stonewalled fast. A sneaky hill child or two may steal away from their home to approach one of the "bad guy" outsiders to sate their curiosity.

the barrayaran camp
Morale is higher than it has been in a while after their recent victory, and the guerrillas are in high spirits. And do they ever love their spirits – as night falls, most of the Barrayarans gathered around the campfires are enjoying the deceptively named, dangerously alcoholic moonshine they call maple mead. It might start out sweet, but it burns all the way down, and a few glasses of that stuff will tank even the heaviest Barrayaran soldier.

But the storm rages on despite their celebration, and preparations must be made. Clearing as much snow off the tents as possible will help ensure that no tents collapse overnight, the horses need to be tended to, and the officers are always running training drills. Food is in real supply now, but the guerrillas need help foraging and hunting nonetheless. And when night falls, you'll have to find a way to keep yourself warm – it's a good thing there are a cozy ten of you to a tent.

the cetagandan base
The Cetagandans outnumber their guerrilla enemies almost seventy-to-one, so their base has not been completely devastated, but it hardly looks to be the work of a few raiding parties. Nothing is beyond repair, but the water treatment plant has been taken offline, which means that all water is now locally sourced and must be treated by hand with purification tablets. No one in the base will starve, but fresh food is mostly unavailable until they get the grow labs back online, which means that meals are mostly comprised of ration bars and MREs. Morale isn't exactly at an all-time low, but none of the ghem officers seem to be in a good mood.

They won't hesitate to put you to work, either. They need all the engineers and laborers they can get for the grow labs and the treatment plant, and the medbay's inventory needs to be thoroughly audited before they can send a request for more supplies. But if you need a break, it's not too hard to slip away for a little quiet downtime. Some of the lower-ranked ghem ladies might let you participate in some more artistic activities, or maybe some of the enlisted soldiers who are a little more used to you by now might invite you into one of their Cetagandan games of strategy. Or, since the treatment plant only affected potable water, you could appreciate your comfortable surroundings and take a nice hot soak in the bathroom while everyone else is working.

the fight
PVP
You're in the midst of a skirmish with the other side -- maybe you signed up for the battle, maybe you just got caught up in the fight -- but at least it's easy to tell who's on what side. Only one side is wielding swords, and the other guns.

But then you come across someone who doesn't look like they're either -- not one of the rugged Barrayarans or the face-painted Cetagandans, but an outsider, an exotic like you. They must be. So do you fight?

RECON
Maybe you're not on the front lines, but there's plenty more to winning the war than just fighting. You're partnered with another outsider on recon; the ground is cold, and you try not to let your shoes crunch too loudly on snow as you scout, scanning for patrols or supply lines.

Or maybe you're with the Cetagandans, hiking it thorugh the mountains with one of your fellow exotics in an attempt to locate the enemy camp. Except it's damned cold, and there's hidden ice everywhere, and everything is starting to really look the same.

--

Feel free to write prompts for your character on either side -- you don't have to choose just one for the TDM! Just label it clearly so folks know. GO WILD, MY FRIENDS

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Miles probably should tell his other self to lay off the mead a bit. Eh ... he's going to need it. Hell, older Miles is going to need it. He drains most of his own cup as well just to keep up.

"Killed me," he says bluntly. "Painfully. With needler fire, yes." He too is picturing Bothari dead on the floor thirteen years ago. "Karmic justice, probably." Those last few words come out as a murmur. Now, the next step is surely obvious enough; his younger self has seen and recognized the cryorevival scars. But he stops anyway, giving it a moment to sink in.

Miles winces visibly at that evaluation, as if the guilt wasn't already weighing heavily enough in his chest. He reaches for a refill, letting out a slow breath. Funny, he's got just as much experience with dying as his older self, but hearing about it is still chilling. It wasn't quite the same, the way it happened.

He's quiet for a moment. He looks at his older self with a slightly haunted look. "Was it slow?"

Miles pours his younger self another glass. "No," he says, staring down at his own scar for a moment. Trying to remember the exact moment of his death is ... difficult, between the shock and the cryoamnesia and everything else. But he has a few fragments that will haunt him well enough. "I looked down and my chest had a hole in it. Then, nothing."

That had been the part that was truly terrifying: the suddenness of it all. He'd not even had a moment to choke out any last words or a warning. He was just dead, done. Everything burned up in an instant. Now he needs more mead, dammit. He tops off his own glass and takes a long, burning sip.

He'll be drunk by the time he gets to telling his story, Miles realizes, but maybe that's for the better. His older self seems to be having a hard time with this, understandably. He looks oddly relieved.

"Good." He takes another sip. God, the stuff doesn't get any better when you drink more of it. He gives the other Miles a sardonic little smile. "You look pretty good for a dead man."

Miles just looks back at himself, that exhaustion from before creeping back into his face. It makes him look haggard and gray. He feels haggard and gray. Someone had died permanently in that rescue. He just hadn't realized it until much, much later.

"Do I?" His eyes are like stone in his face. "The Duronas put me back together fairly well, I admit. All my bones are synthetic now." A pause. How to approach this next part ... As bluntly as the rest? Would he want it like that? Hell. Twenty-five was a lifetime ago. "Now I'm prone to seizures instead. Had one on a Naismith mission."

Again, he'll pause to see what his double figures out on his own.

"Seizures?" Now that's a curveball. Miles tries to swim through the deluge of information, even delivered in surprisingly few words from someone like himself. Instead -- of what, the brittle bones? Supposes that'd have made for a convenient opportunity to do all his bone replacement surgery at once while they were already putting the rest of him together. But that's not what makes the lead sink deeper into his stomach. He prays the maple mead will hit him soon.

"What happened?" The question comes out flatter than he intends. His mind is already dizzy, spinning out a thousand possible answers before the other Miles can say a word. Just tell me, dammit.

You know it's a shitty topic when Miles Fucking Vorkosigan doesn't want to use more words than he has to. Does he hope to avoid the inevitable conclusion of this by not telling his double? Like not actually going through with the whole explanation will make it not real somehow? (But it's not real for this version. Not yet. Ironically, all the more reason to press on.)

"I had one in combat. Cut off the legs of a courier we were escorting." And now, the very worst part. He's been over this so many times in his mind. Picking at the exact chain of events, every opportunity he had to change things. Skip over the details. Skip to the end. "Falsified my report to Simon, so he fired me." A medical discharge on paper - which is the explanation nearly anyone else would get. But Miles has had enough of lying to himself.

The nauseated look on Miles's face is immediately eclipsed by one of appalled shock, and he half-lurches out of his chair, biting the inside of his cheek hard when he puts unchecked pressure on his broken leg.

"You what?" Miles's voice very nearly cracks with the crescendo, but he manages to check himself there, at least. Exactly which part of that he's objecting to isn't clear -- well, all of it, dammit. No wonder the man looks so shelled out. But that doesn't drown out the kneejerk outrage, confused and shocked. Betrayal seems like it's closing in from all sides, now, even from his future. "What the hell -- "

Miles flinches back at that. It's - a very reasonable reaction, yes, and one he would be having if he were confronted with the same thing but - he is not prepared to defend himself from himself. Goddammit.

"I didn't say it was a good decision, all right?" he hisses back at his younger self. "But just - just try and think it through for a minute. I was having seizures. That's a medical discharge no matter what. Naismith was a dead man walking from the moment that needler hit my chest. I thought - I thought I could delay the inevitable." Find a cure on his own. Fix it before reporting the issue, continue on with his life. God, what a fucking idiot he'd been.

He flinches almost in unconscious imitation at Naismith was a dead man walking, because no, dammit, he's only just figured out how to keep all this straight in his head. His head hurts, his vision starting to curl around the edges. Oh, sweet freedom of the mind. The maple mead's finally doing its trick.

But he hadn't been willing to let Naismith go. He sure as hell doesn't feel ready to. But even so --

"By what -- by self-sabotage, you mean?" he demands, and he's trying to keep his voice down but his chest only feels tighter. He can't pretend he knows what he'd do in that case, as of right now, but he knows it wouldn't be that. "And Simon -- " God. Simon would be right to fire him for that kind of horseshit. "Why the fuck would you do that?"

He's already given his younger self the best explanation he could. Everything else is just an excuse. Lies he'd told himself in his then-pressing need to keep hold of this part of his identity. How can he describe how badly that need had spiked after his cryorevival? It had been bad enough before, but being forced to literally piece himself together again had made him that much more dependent on his alternate persona. He'd thought there was no other way.

More excuses. He won't subject his alternate self to them. Instead his expression melts into quiet despair. "I was an idiot," he says, finally. "A desperate idiot who had a million chances to take it back but didn't." He grips his cup too hard, his knuckles turning white. "There was nothing to me without Naismith."

Nothing to me but Naismith. Miles looks sick again, but at least this time, he feels the maple mead burning him up from the inside too. It hits too close to home, in a way, but fuck, this is home, this is him. If he'd been out in the field having seizures instead of rocketing around the Moira, would he have made the same decision? No. Hell, no. He can't bring himself to believe that.

He swallows thickly, watching himself hate himself, and Miles has never seen it reflected back at him like this, the most uncomfortable mirror. Suddenly he wishes he'd gone first.

"Nothing?" Miles's voice comes out soft, and he's clutching his cup just as tight. He struggles to meet his older self's eyes again, biting hard on the inside of his cheek. Somehow, that's not what he'd been expecting.

It's always been something roiling deep through them, this self-loathing. Residue from the poison dripped down their ears all their life, from Piotr's complex relationship with them, from Barrayar itself, and MIles' chosen escape from it. He'd so desperately needed an escape that he'd invented a whole persona to disappear into, and now? It's gone. Evaporated into the thin air from which it has sprung to begin with. That needler had been karmic justice in more ways than one.

"I went home," he starts to reply. "After all of it. After everything. Naismith was gone by then, and I knew it, but - " His turn to look away, towards the fireplace. "I realized that somewhere along the way I'd lost Lord Vorkosigan too."

"Fuck," he mutters, more to himself than -- well, himself. Miles presses back against his chair, shutting his eyes. He tries to keep it from building in his chest, but he feels powerless to stop it. Lost himself completely...God. At least that hadn't happened to Miles, this Miles. No, it'd been more a problem with coexisting and existing without context all at once... He draws his legs up on the chair, sipping at the maple mead and hissing at the burn all the way down.

"How'd -- " he starts, then stops, shaking his head. He doesn't think he can ask his older self just how he'd lost himself so badly. He thinks he already knows. Miles's finger numbly traces the edge of his cup. He looks at the other Miles's face, looking away from him, and then he turns his gaze toward the fire, too.

"Have you found him yet?"

At least he doesn't have to explain. Small mercies, but then he already knew how acute that identity crisis was starting to become when he was 25. No surprise that this version of himself understands the feeling if not the full depths that Miles has plunged into.

"Him? Who? Lord Vorkosigan?" He tilts his head back again, one hand going to his face. The laugh that bubbles up from the bottom of him is not a particularly sane sound. "It doesn't matter. Lord Vorkosigan can't possibly exist here, and neither can Admiral Naismith. Perfect, isn't it? Like something out of a Barrarayan fairy tale."

Edited 2016-11-27 06:19 (UTC)

Oh, yes, that crisis was already in full swing by the time Miles departed from Earth, only accelerated madly by his time on the Moira. That sense of displacement was so jarring, so massive, that he couldn't seem to figure out how to keep himself together for months, months, until he finally buckled under the weight of it. Miles stares at his older self for a long, uncomfortable moment, and then he sets his cup down on the table. He goes slightly slack, elbows resting on his knees, and he rakes both hands back through his hair, like that'll massage his brain back into gear. He lets out a long, slow breath before he looks back up at the other Miles, something strange and distant in his gray eyes.

"So be someone else." He drops the words like dice, bones scattered on a table. Playing the little Admiral had always been a gamble, right from the start. "You're right. Lord Vorkosigan and Admiral Naismith can't exist here. It isn't the right context. Find the Miles that exists in this context. Be him, whoever he is. It's the only way to keep yourself sane."

And boy, doesn't he know it.

"The Miles that exists in this context," he repeats, staring at his younger self. Who is that? A stranded galactic with no title, working desperately to prove that he belongs along Piotr's guerrillas and not dead in the bottom of a ditch somewhere. Mucking stables, translating for his fellow transplants, helping the hillfolk as best he can. Even helping himself as best he can, as evidenced by them being here. It's ... not much, compared to what he had before, but it's not nothing either. And all his sordid history with either identity is necessarily wiped clean.

It's ... enough to actually makes him pause. Because it's good advice. It's damn good advice, which means it's automatically suspect coming from himself. Most importantly, it's enough to jolt Miles out of the haze of despair that's descended in the wake of confessing all his mistakes. God, he wants to get up and pace. He makes an abortive gesture towards it, but he's instantly unsteady on his feet when he moves to get up. Too much mead already.

He's forced to sit back down again, limited to drumming his fingers on the chair. His thoughts are finally turning from the internal to the external, mostly because he doesn't quite want to stare into the void that is his life at the moment. "You have experience with that," he says abruptly. The realization hits him like a lightning bolt. It explains the weird comment about his age, about having died, and being able to give himself advice that he hadn't thought of already. He leans forward, gray eyes focused on his double in turn. "Going somewhere completely crazy and having to find yourself again. What the hell happened?"

Edited 2016-11-27 13:38 (UTC)

It's probably a good thing that Miles's broken leg automatically disqualifies him for pacing, because he'd probably have tried to stand up anyway and fallen. The maple mead is starting to dull the pain that's kicked up, though, which is convenient, seeing as he didn't arrive with any of his painkillers.

Miles smiles bleakly. "Bet you're going to think I'm even more insane." Because between two Miles Vorkosigans, it obviously has to be a contest. He picks up his cup again and takes another sip before leaning back in his chair, tipping his head back. He stares contemplatively at the ceiling.

"I've...done this before. Coming to a strange place with a crowd of equally strange people, all of them displaced from their own worlds, different worlds. Only last time, it wasn't on Barrayar."

Two sawed-off maniacs pacing around would likely make their hostess kick them out anyway, so it's best that they stay seated and make crazy eyes at each other. Miles drains his own cup in a mirrored gesture, already moving to refill both of theirs.

"If I weren't standing here in the middle of the goddamn Occupation - yes. I'd think you're even more insane." A beat. "But I am, and we are. So why the fuck not?" If he's going to go insane, then why not go all the way? Vorkosigans don't half-ass anything, including their mental derangements. "Where the hell did you go?"

Edited 2016-11-27 14:01 (UTC)

Miles shakes his head. "I...don't know, exactly. Definitely not this world. On a ship. The Moira." He sucks in a long, slow breath, trying to figure out where to begin. This is definitely going to be one hell of a trip. At least they're on a...slightly less depressing topic.

"There was some kind of wormhole device on the ship -- well, more like a portal, I guess -- the Ingress. They were all over that universe, except the on onboard was broken." He tilts his head to the side in a you can guess what happened there gesture. "I was among the first wave to arrive. Wait -- no, the second wave. The captains had come by the ship the same way, sometime before us."

Yes, that's right, captains, plural. God, not even the Betans would try to run a ship by committee.

"They were trying to get the ship back to its planet of origin where, supposedly, they could get the Ingress fixed, and thus send us all on our merry way home." He smiled, a little tightly. "It wasn't a very easy ride." And he hadn't even made it all the way to the end of the destination. Dammit. "It wasn't just me, either. Ivan and Gregor were there, too. And Bel," he adds, though his expression flickers for just a moment into something oddly heavy. "Aunt Alys, too, for a little while. I was on the Moira for...about a year."

Captains. Well there's your problem right there. Miles lets that part go with little more than an eyeroll, mostly because there's so much more to dig into here.

"So ... let me get this straight," he says slowly. Reserving judgment on this madness until he's sure he's got it right. "You were on an alien spaceship in a different universe entirely. Because of a malfunctioning wormhole device, which pulled in other people like you, and a crowd from home." Gregor on a goddamn alien spaceship, with no one to protect him other than himself and Ivan and a few others. That sounds like a recipe for a continuous headache if he's ever heard one. "And then you died?"

"Ah," Miles says with a deeply ironic smile. "I'm getting to that."

He rubs the bridge of his nose. "It wasn't an alien spaceship. The captains were more or less human, as far as I could tell. Although one of them had...some kind of weird power that interacted with the Ingress. The Ingress was a confusing thing. But -- " He waves a hand, dismissing that tangent before he follows it.

"We were all told to do our part to keep the ship running. Hard to disagree with that, although none of those four had any idea what they were doing. A doctor, a navigator, an ambassador and -- I don't even know what Típota was." He gives his older self a thoroughly sharp smile, more in self-deprecation than anything else, and he plucks at the front of his Moira uniform, plain black with gray trim. "They put me in Waste Disposal, first. Not a frigging clue about personnel management, until I talked Captain Thán into letting me handle it."

Because of course Miles Vorkosigan would find some way to talk himself into a promotion to a position that didn't even exist until he insisted on its necessity. Thán was a surprisingly patient man, too. It took three whole months for him to finally lose his patience with Miles. An astonishing record.

"We touched down on planets every couple of months, mostly for supply runs. They...didn't tend to go well."

Well that's easier to digest than time travel, at least. Miles immediately grasps the implied structure of the ship, and lets out a faint sort at Waste Disposal. Because of fucking course. That's just a rule of the universe, isn't it? "Let me guess. You had to clean out a few pipes in your time?" If he didn't then Miles is going to be sorely disappointed.

He's not surprised by talking himself into management either. A little impressed - he's allowed to be impressed with himself for managing that particular trick twice, right? - but not surprised, oh no. Sheer boredom would have driven him to it if waste management. was the only alternative.

But the supply runs ... Miles flicks his gaze up and down his double again, looking for scars. "Which you found out first hand," he says bluntly.

No scars to be had on this Miles, not where they're visible, anyway -- and even then, surprisingly few for a dead man revived. Not nearly as many as his older self. And, curiously, no cryo prep scars.

He gives his older self a slightly withering look over the rim of his cup. "I'd rather not talk about it. But by three months in I'd crawled my way out of Waste Disposal up to Personnel Officer and -- Beverage Dissemination Officer," he says with a look of profound amusement at his very official job title for being a bartender.

"We all did," he says, rubbing his forehead. "The second planet we came to -- Caducus Primary, a planet made almost entirely of glass. It was...something to see, really. Towering buildings that swayed slightly, looking like they might fall over, but always maintaining some weird balance. And the Caducans...some of them had a special gift with the glass. They could instill some kind of clairvoyance into it."

His hand goes to his throat again, that nervous tic, and he jerks up the collar of his uniform again unconsciously. "I saw myself, there. I saw -- you. Around thirty, civilian clothes, cryo prep scars. Just a flash, that was it. Damn near drove me crazy trying to figure out what could've happened."

And here's that mirror sitting before him in the flesh, cryo prep scars and all. Miles would have freaked too. Would likely freak out just as badly to see a vision of himself still older, depending on what exactly that vision held. He's freaked out enough listening to his younger mirror talk about having died without any visible scars that he can see. Surely it would have left a mark somewhere? Where are his cryo prep scars?

Focus. This insane tale isn't done yet, so there must be more to tell. "Is it better now?" he says, watching his alternate jerk a hand up to his collar yet again. Instinctively hiding scars? Or reacting to Miles' own neck wounds? "Now that you know how badly you're going to fuck things up, do you feel any better?"

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this thread is slowly killing me

ME TOO god. I blame you for how late I stayed up last night

wow no i blame YOU

rude

YOU'RE rude

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